Serious Adverse Reactions to Essure Birth Control Reported

What is Essure birth control? According to Wikipedia – is a permanent, non-surgical transcervical sterilization procedure for women. Small, flexible inserts are placed into the fallopian tubes by a catheter passed from the vagina through the cervix and uterus. Read through this article and you will find so many similarities to what women who have experienced adverse reactions to the HPV vaccines, Gardasil and Cervarix have gone through.

All three women say they encountered skepticism from doctors, who were unsure their symptoms were connected to Essure. It wasn’t until they went online and found a Facebook group with thousands of women describing similar symptoms that they finally found some answers.

It is time that doctors stop telling women the problems they are experiencing are all in their head. As I have said before that type of attitude and those kinds of words diminishes women. Remember what Eve Ensler has stated:

Hysteria – a word to make women feel insane for knowing what they know.

Women Describe Serious Side Effects from Essure Birth Control

ABC 40
November 7th, 2013

It’s a permanent form of birth control, marketed as a “surgery free way” to prevent unplanned pregnancy.

The makers of Essure — Bayer, Inc. — say their product has a 99 percent success rate, but some local women argue Essure is not only ineffective, but it’s dangerous.

“From the minute I got it, I woke up in excruciating pain, I had heavy bleeding, I couldn’t get out of bed for four days and they just kept telling me it would resolve itself and my body is just getting used to it,” says Melanie Goshgarian of Burlington.

“I had scar tissue built up that tethered and pulled and attached my organs all together, so my bladder and my uterus and my abdomen were all kind of attached and had to be cut apart,” adds Maria Larsen of Holliston.

“It’s just been pure hell the past two years, really,” says Jessica LaVallie of Palmer.

For three Massachusetts mothers who were finished having kids, Essure seemed too good to be true — an easy, in-office procedure where doctors insert small coils into the Fallopian tubes, creating scar tissue and permanently preventing pregnancy without a hysterectomy.

“I was given a brochure, it just seemed like a vacation package — in a couple hours you’ll be fixed and you won’t have to think about this for the rest of your life,” says Goshgarian.

However, LaVallie says her experience was quite the opposite.

“Less than 24 hours after the insertion, I was back in the hospital and I was in the hospital for five days with an infection,” she says.

Over the next two years, LaVallie says those two small coils took over her life — incredible pain and fatigue, memory loss, blinding pain from migraines, and bloating so severe she often looked pregnant.

All three women say they encountered skepticism from doctors, who were unsure their symptoms were connected to Essure. It wasn’t until they went online and found a Facebook group with thousands of women describing similar symptoms that they finally found some answers.

“It’s just not me, this one person in Palmer who has this issue,” says LaVallie. “It’s this huge global thing that’s happening.”

Author: Leslie Carol Botha

Author, publisher, radio talk show host and internationally recognized expert on women's hormone cycles. Social/political activist on Gardasil the HPV vaccine for adolescent girls. Co-author of "Understanding Your Mood, Mind and Hormone Cycle." Honorary advisory board member for the Foundation for the Study of Cycles and member of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research.